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A COMMENTARY BY GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP: Litt.D. 
HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY: ON THE VOLLBEHR COLLECTION 
OF THREE THOUSAND TITLES OF INCUNABULA DISPLAYED 
AT THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB OF NEW YORK : MCMXXVI 
Poamotst WENTY: THIRD TO SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH 


HE BOOKS of the fifteenth century are 
the abiding monument to the most 
perplexing and the most instructive 
of historical eras. No other hundred 
years was packed fuller of things 
which it would be well for mankind 
to think about, and there is no equal 
period which the people of later 
times find so hard to understand. 
It was then that many of the things 

which are recognized as the characteristic features of modern 

civilization had their visible beginnings, and of these all the 
essential facts are known with the amplitude of detail which 
has blossomed into the newspaper accounts of current hap- 
penings. That was also the century in which much that was 
typical of the Dark Ages and of Mediaevalism died, and 
of these dying things, contemporaneous to the new life of 
the Renascence, less than nothing is known, for blank igno- 
rance would be better than the deceptive misconceptions 
which reward the gleanings of most of those who have tried 
to understand the welter and turmoil that made European 

life from 1400 to 1500. 

The books showall this more plainly than anything else; 
indeed, they alone survive to perpetuate adequately its 





glory and its dismal discouragement. No other era has 
provided anything comparable to these books inimpressive- 
ness, of equal power to grip the imagination of future ages, 
so that the word incunabula has become the synonym for 
all that is finest and most abiding in the world of books. 
Behind these inspiring heights, lies the mass of fifteenth 
century printed matter like an arid desert waiting for some- 
one to supply the stream of comprehension without which 
it can neither blossom nor bear fruit. 

The word Incunabula has come to have almost talismanic 
significance among book-lovers. It comes from the Latin 
nursery —‘‘cradle-books” is the usual translation— but it 
was long ago adopted by the students of book-making and 
given a strictly technical meaning, to cover anything printed 
before the end of the year 1500, 7. ¢. all fifteenth century 
books. The attempt at anglicizing “incunable” has not met 
with as general acceptance as it would have, if it had not 
taken most of the poetry out of the word. 

What ought not to be allowed, is the use of this word, 
which has a definite and accepted meaning, as covering fif- 
teenth century books, for anything else. It is occasionally 
and increasingly being taken forall sorts of early efforts, until 
its proper meaning is in danger of being lost. 

An exhibition of Incunabula ought to combine the charm 
of the forest with the delight of the trees, giving the visitor 
a comprehensive impression of what that marvellous fif- 
teenth century was like. It should enable him to appreciate 
the countless ways in which the books produced before the 
year 1501 offer inspiration and guidance to the twentieth 
century. Any book of that time will inspire veneration by 
its appeal to the imagination. The effect is cumulative when 
one is privileged to look at a number of them, and when the 
number isa carefully chosen selection from a comprehensive 
collection, the educational effect increases proportionally. 


2 


The National Arts Club has had the good fortune to have 
at its disposal just such a collection, with the privilege of 
choosing the books which seemed to its committee most 
significant, and of arranging them soas to bring out the mean- 
ing both of the individual volumes and of certain groups 
in which each book needs to be seen in relation to its fellows 
before its influence can be realized. The selection has been 
made fromacollection of more than three thousand volumes 
each of which was printed in the fifteenth century. Estimates 
vary widely as to the total number of works printed before 
1g01, but the number, of which examples still survive, is 
somewhat over 30,000, so that this remarkable collection 
comprises about ten per cent of all the recorded “fifteeners.”’ 
Thesignificance of this percentage becomes clearer when one 
learns from the detailed catalogue that 800 of the 3000 are 
not foundin Hain’s Repertorium Bibliographicum, fora hun- 
dred years the standard authority on fifteenth century books. 
What is even more significant—there are 466 which have 
not been described in any of the supplementary authorities 
which have been accumulating the data that escaped Hain. 
This is undoubtedly a very high showing of books of which 
many must be well-nigh unique; but the more significant 
point is that this is probably about the proportion, one in 
six, of books known only from one or two copies, which 
would hold true of the whole 30,000 recorded Incunabula. 

HE invention of printing divides the fifteenth century 
5 eae halves. The making of the first printed book began 
during the year 1450, and it was completed five years later. 
But the development of this epochal innovation 1s easier 
to understand, if the century is taken by thirds. During the 
first of these, the European world, or that portion of it which 
sought the stimulation of thought as embodied in books, 
got along as best it could by copying each for himself or by 
buying the hand-written products of professional orreligious 


3 


scribes. In one strip of Europe, along the banks of the 
Rhine, there was during these decades a steadily increasing 
demand for booksaboutall sorts of subjects that people were 
interested in talking about. At the same time it became more 
and more difficult to find scribes competent to make these 
books in sufficient numbers to supply the demand. 

At Strassburg, by 1439, a young man had wasted his 1n- 
heritance doing something with great secrecy, but with suffi- 
cient success to bring him occasional profit. A dozen years 
later, he had returned to his native city of Mainz, where he 
induced a money-lender to advance hima considerable sum, 
which he was unable to repay after another five years. Then, 
before the midsummer of 14.56, several of the churches and 
religious establishments in that portion of the Rhineland 
acquired new Bibles. These must have been a great novelty, 
for they had been made bya newmethod, slowand laborious, 
but possessing the inestimable advantage of almost un- 
limited duplication—a hundred, possibly evena hundredand 
fifty copies, all more or less alike. 

Slowly and laboriously other books were made, smaller 
than the Bible and taking only two years to complete. By 
the end of the decade, rival establishments had got to work, 
more or less secretly and with much less technical skill than 
characterized the productions of the shop at which the Bible 
had been produced. Thencamea political upheaval at Mainz; 
the archbishop was driven out by a rival claimant and the 
city suffered from the excessive jubilation of the victors. In 
the confusion, some of the workmen who had acquired 
the knowledge of how to make books in the new way, went 
away to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Followed a decade of 
experimentation, the trial of new ideas, many failures, and an 
amazingly high percentage of successes. By14.70in Germany, 
and ten years later throughout Europe, printing had ceased — 
to be a novelty. 


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The last third of the century saw printing take on many 
_ of its lasting aspects. In the larger centers it became a highly 
developed industry, divided into the branches which still 
mark the allied trades. One man developed a specialty of 
supplying paper, while others devoted their skill to casting 
type. Another found an outlet for his talents in organizing 
the distribution of books to the retail shops, and built up an 
international trade. Books became an article of commerce, 
and the center of the business shifted from the Rhine to the 
Adriatic. Venice became the seat of great wholesale ven- 
tures, of splendid undertakings and of all sorts of devices 
for cheapening the costs of production. The prototype of 
everything which has been said to be responsible for the bad 
book-making of succeeding periods, can be found there be- 
fore the business of making books by machinery was fifty 
years old. 

oBoDy knows who made the first printed book. No one 
N put his name toa copy,so far as has been discovered, 
or laid personal claim to it as his work. The man whose name 
it commonly bears, with unquestionable right, is Johann 
Gutenberg. Much is found in the record about his earlier 
struggles and his financial difficulties which continued until 
the ruling archbishop allotted him a pension as areward for 
services rendered—but with never a word as to what these 
were. He died in 1468 and we know that he had the use of 
a printing outfit then, for a friendly physician laid claim 
to it as his personal property. 

The two men who carried on the business after the first 
Bible was completed were Johann Fust, the money lender 
with whom Gutenberg had dealt five years earlier,and Fust’s 
son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer. They had copies of the Bible 
for sale, and used the type with which it had been printed, 
but neither of them left on record any claim to have shared 
in the invention of printing. On the other hand, they were 


5 


very proud of the books they produced, and with good 
reason. Schoeffer was the most skilful printer of his time, 
and maintained his leading position for half a century. In 
contrast to the secrecy which was persisted in by many of 
his rivals, Schoeffer put his name and his mark at the end of 
almost every book for which he was responsible. He fre- 
quently added a statement that his books were made without 
the use of pen or stylus, but by a new and most wonderful 
method, the discovery of which was one of the great glories 
of the city of Mainz. Clearly, nobody ever realized the im- 
portance of the invention of printing more fully than these 
two men, who were concerned in its earliest development, 
but for some reason that has nevercome to light,they didnot 
mention the name of the man to whom the credit was due. 
Peter Schoeffer, with the backing of his father-in-law, pro- 
duced a series of splendid Psalters, according to the varying 
use of the neighboring dioceses. He printed also many secu- 
lar works, but his finest efforts were devoted to books for 
his ecclesiastical patrons. Besides the service books, he spe- 
cialized in works on the canon law. His magnificent pages, 
on which the requisite amount of text is surrounded by the 
elucidations of commentators—text and commentary being 
never twice of the same length—have been the despair of 
typographers and the envy of editors ever since. After every 
allowance has been made for the cheapness of labor, the long 
hours of work, and the undisturbed patience of interested 
craftsmanship, a large share of credit remains due to the 
masterly ingenuity and resourcefulness of the directing 
mind, which achieved these unmatched triumphs of the 
printing art. 
HILE Fust and Schoeffer, in their secure position with 
\ \ fullest experience, the largest plant, and the wealthiest 
patrons, were producing masterpieces of printing, various 
rival establishments started up, to supply a wider need. At. 


6 


Strassburg, where Gutenberg lived during the years when 
the invention was being perfected, it is likely the knowledge 
of how it was done was possessed by some of his helpers. 
However strictly he may have sworn them to secrecy, it is 
not likely that they refrained from trying their hand at imi- 
tating what was being done at Mainz. The early Strassburg 
books are especially interesting because they are so crude a 
contrast to those of Schoeffer. The first Strassburg printers, 
Johann Mentelin, and his son-in-law, Adolf Rusch, both 
showed the greatest reluctance to signing their work. Most 
of Rusch’s books have until very lately been hidden in 
bibliographies under the anonymous heading of “the R 
printer,” so slightis the evidence, still far from certain,which 
connects the man who used a peculiar type with Rusch’s 
shop. Despite their deficiencies, Mentelin and Rusch were 
both men of considerable business ability,and they were re- 
sponsible not only for many monumental volumes, but 
also for some of the early steps by which the craft became 
an organized business. Ruschapparently realized his proper 
field of activity, and neglected printing to become the first 
regular “middleman” in the industry as a wholesale dealer 
in paper for book-making. 

Cologne is another city at which printing was well-estab- 
lished before the appearance of the first book to be signed 
or dated there. As at Strassburg, many of the printers mod- 
estly refrained from recording their names in their books. 
The little that can be found out about the different presses 
has to be gleaned by minute comparison of the types and 
the presswork.Cologne was a university city, and the larger 
part of its publications were small books designed for the 
use, and the purses, of students. These little volumes were 
issued and re-issued in a confusing succession of scarcely 
distinguishable editions. There is no other place whose 
books offer a more enticing subject for detailed study, with 


7 


so great a prospect that the reward will be a fuller under- 


standing of the educational system which produced the men 
who became the leaders in the reform movements of the six- 
teenth century. The first Cologne printer was Ulrich Zell, 
and he capped a long life of active work by contributing a 
statement about the invention of printing to the Cologne 
Chronicle of 1499. This has rarely been bettered as a fair 
presentation of the probable facts. 
Cy” R men who knew how to print, who were anxious to 
make their way in the world,went up the Rhine to Basle, 
and across country to Augsburg, Nuremberg, Buda Pesth, 
Cracow, Lubeck, and to a dozen more German speaking 
cities before 1475. Two—Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold 
Pannartz—led the way over the mountains into Italy, and 


after a brief stop at the Benedictine Monastery at Subiaco 
to show what they could do, settled at Rome, where they 


found a competitor in anotherGerman printer, Ulrich Hahn. 
Meanwhile, John and Wendelin of Speier had established 
themselves at Venice and laid the foundations which within 
a decade made that city the world’s center of book-making, 
a position which it held for a full century. 

From Basle three German craftsmen were called to Paris, 
to set up a press in the Sorbonne, while others took the road 
to Lyons. From this great trading center they spread out to 
Avignon anda score of other places in southern France, and 
over the Pyrenees into Spain. Behind these forerunners, 


their more conservative fellows moved along from townto 


town, until there was scarcely a place of importance in Ger- 


many, Italy, Holland or Flanders, which had not sharedin 


the excitement of seeing its first piece of printing produced. 
At Bruges, an English merchant, William Caxton, had a 
book printed in his native language. When he returned to 


England in 1477 hewas accompanied by Wynkynde Worde, — 


a Skilled craftsman. Wynkyn succeeded to the business after 


8 


Collecte 


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tueri.ec? yrous dolo et fraudib? fidé adibbuit ac nepbas one 





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ma) CHlieres dolofe citiffime fraudes z médatia exco- 
pa citare {cifitde quoaudibocarguméti ‘WPerrex 
Ait quide3 rufticus ve fuaz vindemearet vineam yr 


€4| lebat)diunus mozaturum ctimiffo nuncio (ud yo- 
cabatamicum quem yementem dapib? ct potu bit 

= ~ refecit yt venert foztius valerct obfequiacadit au 
tem yt marit? 9 ramo yitisin oculo percuffus ye nibil de illo vide- 
ret/cito domi rediret et boftta pulfarct.quod intelligens yroznt- 
mu cerrita amict abfco dit in camera/ocnde marito apperuit bo- 
ftium.quiintrans grautter po oculo mits z volens camera wiflit 
parartcileceum Rernt ve poffct quiefcere. Limuit autem yrozne i 
trafamichlancdcé videret orxigs ull Cur em fettinas 9d lectét vic tis 
pz? obfir nbi quare ficturberis aio Mlle vero rorumags fibi accide 
rat yrounarrauit. Zit lla peomitte mquit commnx sinanamime ve 
q Wy 





The tree of forbidden fruit 
Aesop's Fables, Michel Furter, Basel, 1490 





















ee 
—herg tr deur (cynee lag aclen : 





An accident on the Papal journey to Constance 
Augsburg, 1483 


Caxton’s death, and maintained a lively and profitable com- 
petition with a rival from northern France, Richard Pynson. 

T is difficult for the twentieth century to realize that the 
I reason why the majority of fifteenth century books are in 
Latin and religious, is because religious matters were what 
interested people most deeply, and Latin was the common 
language which was generally understood. There were differ- 
ences of opinion about matters of scholastic theology which 
were as vital and as closely allied to questions of life and 
death in the later fifteenth century decades, as anything for 
which blood was spilled in Franceatthe end of the eighteenth 
or at the beginning of the twentieth in Russia. As for the 
language, it was an exact, supple, effective medium of com- 
munication capable of being used foreverynecessary purpose 
and generally understood,even bya good proportion of those 
who could not read it, or anything else. Latin was killed by 
those who thought they were its only true friends, the purists 
whofoughtvaliantly and violently for the language of Cicero, 
and would tolerate no compromise. Their victory gave them 
the most efficient instrument for educating youth which has 
yet been devised, the study of classical Latin, but they de- 
stroyed its usefulness as a means of human communication. 
Whatit might have been, is shown by the way in which it has 
held its place as the scholar’s language and the dingua franca 
of the Roman Church. 

The press maintained a neutral position between the 
Ciceroneans and their opponents, serving both with equal 
readiness in accordance with their means. It took sides, un- 
consciously, and unintentionally, in fostering the vernacular 
languages, and it enabled these to get the strength which was 
eventually to complete the downfall of Latin. The unifying 
influence of printing, more than any other single factor, cre- 
ated the national languages of Europe. So long as each book 
was an independent creation, there was no strong impulsion 


9 


to break down the dialectical individuality of each locality. 
With printing, everything depended then, as it still depends 
now, upon quantity production. There has to be a market 
for many copies all alike, before the single books can be sold 
cheaply. When William Caxton set up his press in England, 
he had to decide which one of a dozen varieties of the spoken 
language should be adopted as the standard. It was this deci- 
sion,controlled no doubt by other factors,which fixed the lit- 
erary language. Similarly as between High and LowGerman, 
northern and southern French, and the Italian and Spanish 
dialects, the printers exerted an irresistible pressure which 
submerged local peculiarities so faras the written and printed 
language is concerned. The result was that each nation 
gained forthwith a unity which could only come through a 
common medium of communication. 
ae E books which were printed in Latin and in vernacular 
tongues divide into three large groups. Most numerous 
of the books which have survived the vicissitudes of four 
centuries are those which concern religion. Next in conven- 
tional importance are the works of literature, chiefly the 
ancient classics, including works in Hebrew. Lastly—a 
group which has suffered far more than the others from the 
wastage of time and neglect—are the texts which were printed 
because they had a contemporaneous interest,the ephemera 
which seem so unimportant after they serve their imme- 
diate purpose, but which posterity cherishes as the priceless 
evidence of what the past was really like. 

Each of the three split up into countless smaller groups. 
Most important of the religious works is the Bible, the first — 
book to be printed and never since displaced as the “best 
seller” of every year. Impressive as is the typographic 
splendor of the early editions, it yields in this respect to the 
long succession of church service books, Missals, Psalters, 
Antiphonaries, and the others which were commissioned 


IO 


by the local Episcopate to meet the needs of the differing 
uses, and upon which the printers lavished their devotion 
to Mother Church and to their craft. The writings of the 
church fathers, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas 
Aquinas, as well as the then new Imitation of Christ, by 
Thomas a Kempis, next to the greatest of all in lasting in- 
fluence upon the spiritual life of humanity, with innumerable 
others possessing a less universal appeal, were produced in 
successive editions. They prove better than any argument 
how hungry the thoughtful reading public of that time must 
have been for spiritual consolation and enlightenment. 
The spiritual guidance of the world required, then no 
less than now, a vast amount of administrative machinery 
and the services of many different sorts of men and women. 
The press served these as readily as any others in their dif- 
ferences of opinion or belief and in their current clerical 
requirements. Among all the fifteenth century printers there 
_ were two whose books are scorned by the collectors because 
they are cheap things, poorly printed, small and unimpres- 
sive. But these two, Stephan Plannck and Eucharius Silber, 
were active rivals for more than twenty years for the official 
printing of the Roman court. Any one handling a few score 
of the insignificant quarto tracts that were rushed from their 
presses—four of the slightest of these supplied a demand 
for the text of an epistle telling that a New World had been 
discovered, the priceless Columbus Letter—will understand 
more clearly what the pre-Reformation world was like. 
_ The classics speak for themselves. They have long been 
the pride of collectors and the envy of students. A genera- 
tion which no longer reads Horace and which never knew 
that the Ovid of the Metamorphoses was once more widely 
known for his De arte amandi et de remedio amoris, neverthe- 
less shows no falling off in its respect for and its desire to 
possess the volumes in which Homer and Vergil, Aristotle 


Il 


and Pliny, Thucydides and Livy, Herodotus and Tacitus, 
Plato and Seneca, Aristophanes and Terence, were read in 
those days of the early Renascence, when all the learned 
world was bursting with new things. 

But it is not alone the ancient classics,whose first editions 
possess an ever-increasing power to fascinate and to inspire 
those who are privileged to gaze upon them. Boccaccio 
and Petrarch did their full share in reviving the ancients, 
but they did more for posterity, although they may not have 
guessed it, by telling tales and making verses in the language 
of the vulgar commonalty. Dante is on a still more exalted 
plane, the peer of any, ancient or modern. France contribu- 
ted the Roman de la Rose and other romances of chivalry, 
Spain its coplas,centones and cancioneros rivalling the chansons 
of southern France, and Germany the more vigorous verse 
of the troubadour epics Parsival and Titurel by Wolfram 
von Eschenbach and Alfred von Scharffenberg. 

The struggle for the spiritual and temporal control of 
the archbishopric of Mainz vitally affected the course of the 
development of typography, in more ways than the one 
which is described in all the treatises on the history of ty- 
pography. Both contestants used the press to assist them 
in informing the public of what was going on. Placards ap- 
peared on the streets, giving the text of the communications, 
papal bulls and official decrees, designed to influence the 
citizens to choose one side or the other. It was propaganda 
and it was news, two of the things upon which printing ever 
since has depended for its profitable existence. Naturally 
these and similar broadsides, single sheets, folders of two or 
four or a few more leaves, which were intended to serve a 
need or supply a demand which passed almost before it could 
be supplied, made no claim to be preserved for posterity. 
Sometimes one was accidentally slipped between the leaves 
of a book and luckily forgotten. Others were put away or 


12 





~The first Czecho-Slovakian book 
Printed at New Pilsen, Bohemia, 1476 





— 


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f . U 







HN BAS 
nh: me! 


AN 
Ey ey 


A fifteenth century autopsy 
Fasciculus Medicinae, Gregorius, Venice, 1495 


bound in a volume with others of like inconsequence, on the 
chance that they might be wanted later. Most of them went 
the way of waste paper; but fortunately waste paper has 
always had a certain value, and in those days it had one par- 
ticular use, which has been of inestimable importance in 
preserving for more appreciative eyes a very small fraction 
of what bibliographers would like to recover of the early 
specimens of printers’ work. Such of these as have been 
preserved,were saved because the book binders liked to use 
for the covers paste-board made by pasting together waste 
sheets of paper. From these pasted sheets, subsequently sep- 
arated, have been recovered many fragments of books which 
have otherwise entirely disappeared as well as much precious 
evidence of how the printers worked, as shown for instance 
by the mistakes they made on the sheets that were thrown 
away. From such things—proof sheets, cancels, mistakes 
in impression, imperfect work of any sort—the researcher 
reconstructs the details of the past. 
oo were many other kinds of books on many other 
subjects. Most books were printed in order to be sold, 
and human nature has not changed its desires to any notice- 
able degree, nor its habit of spending money for what it 
wants, in the brief span of four or five centuries. Theitinerant 
pedler was then the commonest means of distribution, and 
many books show by their titles even more than in their con- 
tents that they were designed to meet the requirements of 
roving merchants or of those who occupied booths on mar- 
ket day. Fewindeed of such things have survived, but [/Son- 
aglio delle Donne, Contrasto degli Uomini et delle Donne,and Le 
malitie delle Donne, are suggestive of what they were like. 
Each age has its own taste in fiction, and there may be com- 
fort in the reflection that the popular novels of the fifteenth 
century can be read today about as easily as those of the 
eighteenth century or of the mid-Victorian era. Certain of 


13 


the fifteeners enjoyed a wide popularity, calling for many 
editions, so that occasional copies can still be found of the 
Dialogus Salomonis et Marcophih, or the Liber gestorum Bar- 
laam et Iosophat. One novel enjoyed a most respectable 
vogue,and a corresponding good fortune in being preserved 
more often for later generations. This was the Historia de 
duobus amantibus Euryalo et Lucretia, which was written by 
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini long before he dreamed that he 
was to become Pope Pius II. 

Better than any systematic statement about duly ordered 
subjects, for the purpose of showing how like the fifteenth 
was to other centuries before and since, may be a culling of 
odd volumes on all sorts of matters. First of these should 
come the treatise of Marcus Gabius Apicius Caelius De Re 
Coquinaria, valued as a medical incunabulum, but of wider 
interest because it is the corner stone of any collection of 
cookery books. With food goes drink, as one may learn from 
a Tractatus de vino or the Contrasto dell ’acqua e del vino, both 
from Italian presses. Then relaxation, and the perusal of 
the famous early book on chess, Solatium ludi schacorum by 
Jacobus de Cessolis might be better for digestion thana well- 
fought game. There are many treatises on serious fighting, 
De re militari, mostly from Italian shops, although France 
characteristically contributed Instruction de Chevalrie et ex- 
ercise de guerre. The great fighters of every age have likewise 
been great builders, and for these there is the treatise De re 
aedificatoria by Leo Baptista de Albertis, dedicated by An- 
gelus Politianus in 1485 to Lorenzo de Medici. With this 
belongs the De omnibus ingeniis augendae memoriae libellus of 
Johannes Albertus. 

OTHING Shows the national characteristics of different 
N countries more distinctly than the pictures which ap- 
pear in books that were intended to appeal to a general book 
buying public. Sometimes it was merely a cut to attract at- 


14 


tention to the title leaf; in Germany, on an elementary text 
book, a picture of a school room with the scholars working 
diligently, or a charging warrior ona tract which turns out to 
bean appeal for contributions to help overcome the heathen; 
in France a delightfully intricate trade mark of the printer 
or book seller; and in Spain the impressive coat of arms of 
a patron. 

Another common practice was to provide at the begin- 
ning of each section a small cut, the width of the column of 
text, giving a pictorial summary of the subject matter. The 
contrast between the national styles can be seen most clearly 
in the pictures in the vernacular German and Italian Bibles, 
each telling the story in naive simplicity and straightfor- 
wardness, with equal effectiveness but markedly different 
technique. The rival Venetian editions of Dante, also, show 
this method of illustration atits best. The artists utilized the 
limited space at their disposal most cleverly, showing the 
progress of the narrative by representing each character two, 
three, or even four times in a single picture, preserving their 
individuality without confusing the eye or lessening the 
picturesque quality. 

There is no question of superiority between the Nur- 
emberg Schatzbehalter of 1491 and the Hypnerotomachta 
Poliphili printed by Aldus at Venice in 1499. Each served its 
purpose perfectly for the public for which it was intended. 
Neither would have gone as well at Paris, where the French 
miniaturists produced an even more distinctive combination 
of decoration and illustration in the borders designed for the 

rinted Horae beatissimae virginis Mariae. In Spain, where 
the Gothic inheritance held strongest, everything was done 
on a grander scale, which for sheer smashing splendor out- 
did all the rest. 

There are three groups of books, each famous for its il- 
lustrations, printed during the last fifteenth century decade, 


r5 


which between them embody a large part of the story of the 
conflicting influences that were determining the fate of Eu- 
rope. While the Parisian book-lovers and church-goers were 
taking up the Horaeat the rate of anewedition every month, 
in the 1490s, the best sellerin the Rhine valley was Sebastian 
Brant’s Ship of Fools, with its representation on every page 
of auniversal human foible. At the same time the Florentine 
populace was buying successive editions of the sermons 
and tracts of their great revivalist, Savonarola, in which the 
powerful appeal of the text was matched by the unsurpassed 
effectiveness—the simplest means perfectly employed—of 
the pictures. Carried away by his hypnotic oratory, the Flor- 
entines burned their profane books, and then they burned 
the exhorter; the press which had helped him most faith- 
fully, serving his enemies as honestly. 

Savonarola’s splendid triumph, and his fate—the confus- 
ing juxtaposition of an episode which embodies all that is 
finest in many of the most momentous outbursts in modern 
history, with another that is just as characteristic of darkest — 
mediaevalism—are typical of this whole half-century. No 
one will ever understand it, and by understanding it, make ~ 
it possible for those who write history to bridge the chasm 
which has heretofore separated the modern world from the 
mediaeval,until he puts himself in the place of the men who 
frequented the fifteenth century bookshops. There, as no- 
where else, all these cross currents swelled and eddied.T here 
the seeds were dropped which were fertilized by the Renas- _ 
cence and the Reformation, and flowered as the Revolutions 
of 1688, of 1776, of 1789, of 1830 and 1849, of 1871 and 
of 1916. But no contemporary bookshop ever brought to- 
gether so many of the books and pamphlets, the broadsides 
and ephemeral local publications, as can be found today in 
the few great libraries which have made an especial effort 
to gather fifteenth century books. : 


16 


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Tilting at the Council of Constance 
Anton Sorg, Augsburg, 1483 


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fone firrsde aile-Porie Bome vind crrfPeVat yt fat an 5m fulisc]é wor%e- 
“Guerre verden Page ers wy Gerert myddewecfe-macke gor%e Gonz 
nePat feVen Page Pyede geueynd de mon vn fterne Der nadyt-On is 
Se Gack mercurineDes veffeen ages Vert wy Geren DonnerVad)-Sdhopp 
orallerGanve vogePur Der Rindse vide fy({dbe it Fern warer “4x Vern fefte 
age Geis wy Beret fey9ach (Bop Be afer’ ‘and fee quecE vn wifdc dere 
Ond 11 Ver er fEer (Ene des Pages mackeBe gor Wame pander aTea 
forem A€enit(fe-vrtd gaff Sine gewalt ouer fee-ouce voggcl once fi(jBe- 
ond fandedne in Pat Paradis-dar mackedebe tua vars AVames rib6e- 
Fn Per Bridde fEunVe Ves Jages Viewile Vat Ge fleyp-vnd gaff cua adame 
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The expulsion from Eden 
Saxon Chronicle, Peter Schoeffer, Mainz, 1492 





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HE peculiar good fortune of the National Arts Club 

lies in the fact that it was able to draw, for its exhibition, 
upon a private collection which in this respect holds its own 
with the largest public institutions. This collection is repre- 
sentative, to an amazing degree, of every sort of publication 
which came from the fifteenth century presses. It would have 
taken no great skill, nor a noteworthy amount of money be- 
fore the Great War, to gather 3,000 different incunabula. 
Since the war, one American gentleman has exceeded that 
number. But to make a collection large enough to include 
a due proportion ofall sorts of books,and keep it thoroughly 
representative of half a dozen racial stocks and of a crowded 
half century, must have taken skill, persistence, and wide 
connections. 

It is a curious commentary upon the way libraries are 
formed,that no other collection of incunabula has been made, 
that I am aware of, comparable to this one in extent, and 
with this especial purpose. The great European libraries 
accumulated early printed books more or less accidentally, 
at first, by inheritance from monastic collections in Germany 
or from the libraries of the older ruling families in Italy, 
Franceand England. The British Museum seta new fashion 
forty years ago, of collecting examples of the work of differ- 
ent printers. This led to a particular vogue for the first book 
of each press. George Dunn went this one better, and very 
much better, by buying only books that could not be as- 
signed toany known press.William Morris, F airfax Murray, 
and Pierpont Morgan gave an impetus to the collecting of 
early illustrated books, which put these in a class by them- 
selves so far as prices are concerned. There are also collectors 
who try to get one book, any book, dated in each successive 
year. Recently, certain American libraries have shown a 
fondness for incunabula of which no other American library 
is known to possess a copy. But apparently nobody else 


17 


thought that the fifteenth century books best worth having 
are those that show what the fifteenth century was like. 

No one who examines the books in the exhibition, and 
realizes that a dozen similar exhibitions might have been 
made from the same library, each equally instructive, al- 
though perhaps less picturesque, can fail to feel that the 
Club was very fortunate in those who had the foresight to 
arrange for it. Those who are studiously inclined will have an 
added feeling of gratitude that such a collection was made, 
before it was too late. During the war, the great reservoirs 
of early printed books dried up. Twenty-five years ago, the 
supply of incunabula seemed inexhaustible. This is no 
longer true, and even a slight increase in the number of 
libraries which are attempting to gather fifteenth century 
books is rapidly making the desirable volumes unprocur- 
able. There are still books to be had, that were printed be- 
fore 1501, if that is all one wishes to possess. But if one 
wants to envisage the fifteenth century as a whole, from the 
Rhine to the Tagus and the Thames, at play as well as at 
church, in the counting house and in the lists as well as in 
the scholar’s retreat, it cannot now be done again anywhere 
near as well as Dr. Vollbehr has done it. 








MADE FOR DR. OTTO H. F. VOLLBEHR _ 


BY THE PYNSON PRINTERS OF NEW YORK 


IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER 


q 





MCMxX XVI 











GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 


UUM 


3 3125 00132 7051 








